FIRST Lady Thandiwe Banda has advised women in rural areas to consider going back to school, saying it would quicken the opening up of rural areas and enhance women’s understanding of their rights. Ms Banda told a group of women at Mwense High School in Mwense on Tuesday afternoon that nobody could ever be considered too old to return to school.
“You can never be too old for school, there’s always time for you to go back to school and pursue your education. Here I am, even as the president’s wife, I am still studying and I would like you women to go back to school and better your lives,” Ms Banda said.
She said women usually faced a lot of problems and most of them resulted from failure by women to understand the issues that affect them.
Ms Banda also condemned the culture of early marriages perpetuated in rural areas, saying it was depriving young girls of their right to education and exposing them to HIV/AIDS at a tender age.
“It is easier to understand reproductive health, to understand HIV/AIDS, to understand safe motherhood when one is educated. We can be given anything but without education nothing will change, nothing will happen,” she said.
The first lady appealed to parents to take their children to school and discourage them from entertaining early marriages.
Ms Banda is in the province to inspect women’s development projects, and make donations to existing support groups. In Mwense, she donated candle-making machines to Mambilima Special School and was yesterday expected to meet women support groups on Chilubi Island.
[Times of Zambia]